changing the voice for Assisted Reader in the Kindle App

I could be wrong, but I think it will only use whatever voice you have set up in spoken content under your device's accessibility settings. I really hope there is a way to add the ai voices I've heard people out here talking about. If that ever happens, I might actually be able to use Kindle and enjoy it. Otherwise, if it's only the voices my iphone already has, it isn't all that different than what was already possible, at least to my ears.

How do I find this on IOS? As far as I was aware the only means of reading in the way you suggest is using apple's own accessibility tools.

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After doing some digging, I discovered that you can in fact change the voice of Assistive Reader, from inside the, Kindle app, not the, Alexa app.
Here are the steps:

Step 1:
1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content. Tap here, then scroll down to Voices. Next, choose a voice, either standard or enhanced, and download as needed.
2. Tap on the voice once installed to 'select' it as your choice, then exit out of the Spoken Content settings.

Step 2:
1. Open the Kindle app on your iPhone, etc.
2. Go to Library, tap on any book in your Library.
3. Once in the book, double tap to bring up the menu at the top, then navigate to, "Reading Settings".
4. Navigate to the word, "More", and tap on it. Note this may not read as a button as of this writing.
5. You will now see, "Assistive Reader" settings.
6. Enable it, choose your speech rate, and whatever other settings you may want (there will be a few choices).
7. Navigate to the top of the screen and tap on close menu button.

Step 3:
1. Tap on the screen again to bring up the book menu.
2. At the end of the menu you will find play controls for Assistive Reader.
3. Enjoy your book.

I hope this helps everyone. It was a real pain to figure out. 😭

hi so can we lock the screen as reading this way?

I have VoiceOver on, I just do a two-finger swipe to start reading - it keeps going until I stop it. I stop it and then start it again. What's different about this compared to what the author of this post is saying? I real am bewildered.

It can be a different voice but it also works more like an audio book. You're quite right, there's not a huge difference, it's just a bit tidier and allows for a 'book voice' and a screen reader voice to be different.

Also, thanks for your instructions, Brian.

Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to change from daniel... I'm in the UK. I've changed it in the spoken settings in the IOS settings, but it doesn't seem to be working. Hmm.

I too am in the UK and don’t seem to be able to change the Kindle assistive reading voice to anything but Daniel. I pick a voice under spoken content and change it. However, when I go to play the kindle book it just speaks in Daniel‘s voice and quite slow.

You can change the rate if you double tap the book, go right to the end and just before play you can change the speed. 0.7, 1, 1.2, 1.5 etc. It doesn't seem to use the speed in the spoken settings in IOS settings at all, which suggests something there too.

Thanks Ollie. Got the speed changed now. Shane about only being able to use Daniel though. Unless there is something we are missing.

I've tried restarting apps, the ipHone too. I'm on a beta so was worried that was the issue but, assuming you're not on the beta, that's out. I've also tried a couple of different voices, siri, James and Sarina.

@Will, no unfortunately, you still need the Alexa app for that. You cannot even go to the Home screen, or app switcher, as either action will pause the playback.

@Assistive Intelligence, it is just another way of doing things. I posted instructions because the OP asked specifically for instructions on how to do this from inside the Kindle app. 🤷

@Ollie and Barbara, I, may, have a work-around for you guys. Because I have no clue as to why you cannot change your voices. I can use anything I have downloaded, with the exception of Siri voices. Downloaded or not, Kindle Assistive Reader will revert to Samantha whenever I attempt to set it to a Siri voice.

Anyway try:

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content.
2. Scroll down to Default Language. Should be immediately after Voices.
3. Set yours to English or Current Locale (choose the opposite of whatever is already selected, i.e. if Current Locale is selected, choose English, and vice versa). Mine is set to Current Locale, and works fine, "for me". I am in the US, but that really, really should not matter.

HTH. 🙂

Hi Brian, I followed your steps but still no luck. I changed from current locale to English, but still whatever Voice I select it reverses back to Daniel. Very frustrating.

Well, I am out of ideas at the moment. I have no idea why you guys cannot change your voice for Kindle's Assistive Reader.

Just to play the dreaded devil's advocate, you are doing this with the Kindle app? And not the Alexa app?

Apologies, but figured I'd double check. 😅

Yes, definitely doing it with the Kindle app

I think now, the juice isn't really worth the squeeze. It might have been nice, but, until there are some really great voices, it might not be worth all this bug chasing.

I like the idea of being able to start and stop reading with a two finger double tap. Just as with any other audio. It’s fine if you’re happy just to use Daniel. Personally I prefer to change the voice depending on the type of book I am reading. I will stick with it for now for the books I am happy to use Daniel, but hope for improvement in the future.

If I start reading with a two-finger downwards swipe, a two-finger tap stops and then starts reading...

Yes it does, but this is the two finger double tap just like when you start and stop music or an audiobook. Just another way of doing something.

Also, by using the magic tap you can turn speech off when you’re listening to your Kindle book as I usually do when listening to audiobooks, so you aren’t interrupted with any notifications.

Whenever I’m using the assistive reader on the Kindle app, it’s always kind of choppy. It skips over words or just reads them weirdly — like it’s not clean or consistent. It’s not even that it’s choosing to skip specific words, it’s that the speech sounds off. Is there any kind of workaround for that or any troubleshooting steps I can try?

Also, when I try to read a Kindle book through the Alexa app and ask it to speed up the reading, it keeps telling me that my device doesn’t support playback settings for speed control. I’m using an iPhone, and I don’t have an Alexa device — I’m using the Alexa app — so it makes no sense that it won’t let me adjust the playback speed. It literally says that playback settings aren’t supported on my device, which is strange. Whenever Speak Screen is reading and it reaches that section in the book where it says something like “4 minutes left in chapter,” the reading completely stops. It doesn’t continue after that. I have to manually swipe to the next page, and even then it doesn’t always pick up where it left off. I’m guessing it’s hitting that “reading progress” line and getting stuck. What’s weird is I already turned off all the reading progress settings in the Kindle app — like all of them — but it still seems to act like that “x minutes left in chapter” line is part of the text and stops right there every time. It doesn’t follow the flow like it should. So basically what’s happening here is that when it gets to that break in the text — where it’s estimating the time left in the chapter — the Speak Screen feature stops working. And yes, I can swipe down with two fingers and read the text that way using the reader, and that works, but it reads way slower than Speak Screen and I need it to be faster. Apple Books lets me do that. Speak Screen works way better there. It flies through the text. The only time it ever pauses is when it changes the pages, but even then, it keeps going like normal. No hiccups, no random pauses.
But on the Kindle app? It’s not smooth. I don’t know if it’s the way the book is formatted or if there’s something else I need to tweak in the settings, but either way, it’s been super frustrating.

If anyone’s dealt with this or knows a fix, I’d appreciate the help.

Spoken reader is nice, however, it’s utterly ridiculous that you cannot use it in books that have audible books as well. I mean, I’m just reading a book that I rented via Kindle, unlimited, I tried spoken reader, and it said text to speech is not available because this book has audible, or something like that. It’s ridiculous tbh.

Ok so spoken voice will let you to change the voice used in the kindle reading mode app. Odd thing is... The rate... Doesn't seem to change no matter how much one messes with it. I.e, in spoken content the rate is set to 75% but as soon as I start reading via text to speach in the kindle app the voice is slow, defenetly not at 75%. Odd.